Book Summary

Chapter 1: Good is the enemy of great

Good to Great:Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others
Don’t answers the search for enduring excellence. It is not just a
business problem; it’s a human problem. The principles within this
book can be applied to other organizations, not just business
enterprises. Good schools can learn to become great schools. Good
government agencies can learn to be great government agencies.
The Framework
The build-up leads to the following stages of breakthrough: Disciplined
people; disciplined thought; and disciplined action.

Chapter 2: Level five leadership

To achieve Level 5 Leadership one must fully realize and personally
incorporate the following five professional aptitudes:

• A highly capable individual that gives productive contributions;

• A contributing team member who is familiar to group settings;

• A competent manager that organizes people and resources

toward the efficient and effective pursuit of objectives;

• An effective leader who has breakthrough ideas that result in an

effective decisions and stimulate higher performance standards;

• An executive who can build enduring greatness through a

paradoxical blend of humility and professional will.

Level 5 leaders have the common goal of building great companies that
will endure into the next generation and are comfortable with the idea
that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success can be
traced back to their efforts. As one Level 5 leader said, “I want to look
out from my porch at one of the great companies in the world someday
and be able to say, ‘I used to work there’.”
In contrast to Level 5 Leaders, comparison leaders are far more
concerned with their own reputation for personal greatness and often
fail to prepare the company for success in the next generation. After all,
what better testament to your own personal greatness than having the
organization fall apart after you leaves?

Chapter 3: First Who, Then What

The main point of this chapter is to get the right people on the bus and
the wrong people off the bus before you figure out where to drive it.
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to the right people. The
right people will do the right things and deliver the best results
regardless of the incentive system. The second key point is the degree of
sheer rigor needed regarding people decisions in order to take the
company from good to great. Good-to-great companies know people
aren’t your most important asset, the right people are.
Good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character than
education, skills, or experience when hiring. The reason: you can teach
skills, but character, basic intelligence, work ethic, and dedication to
fulfilling commitments are values that are ingrained in a person.
Good-to-great companies are rigorous, but not ruthless. People who do
not fit the mold eventually quit or are told to find opportunities
elsewhere. The most rigorous discipline is found at the top, where the
largest burden of responsibility lies.
CHAPTER 3

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2008

"Good to Great" Chapter 3: First Who... Then What:

This is a great chapter that emphasizes the importance of who is on the

team of your company. The idea is to get the wrong people off the bus, and
the right ones on. It's key to have highly skilled and more importantly
motivated people on the team that have the drive to see the vision of the
company follow through. Instead of using programs to motivate your
employees, hire those that are already motivated. This will greatly increase
the productivity and success of a company, and perhaps life when you
surround yourself with others who are motivated and push you in the right
directions. With a team of motivated players with vision, they will be
prepared to adapt as the company's needs grow and adjust, and they
themselves can assimilate accordingly, and provide informative insight
throughout the process

Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet

Never Lose Faith)
In confronting the brutal facts, the good-to-great companies found
themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more
dispirited.
In every case, the management team responded with a powerful
psychological duality: they soically accepted the brutal facts of reality
while maintaining an unwavering faith and a commitment to prevail as
a great company despite the brutal facts. Collins calls this duality the
Stockdale Paradox.
What separates great people or companies from the mediocre is not the
absence of difficulties, but the way in which the person or company
deals with the inevitable difficulties of life.
How to create a climate where the truth is heard
There are various ways of procuring or hearing the truth from your
workforce. When leaders ask questions, it doesn’t mean that they desire
to manipulate or put down others, it is because they require
information in order to understand the facts. That is why, in some
cases, they hold non-agenda forums or informal meetings to obtain
information. The truth can be found when one engages in a dialogue or
debate to search for the best possible results. Conducting autopsies to
find out the main reason for failures within the company objectives is
an effective way to uncover truths. Building a “red flag” mechanism is
another way to ascertain truths.
Short pay is a red flag device that will allow the customer to encircle
items that they find unsatisfactory, and to only pay for the remaining
items. In this way, the company will be warned before it loses the
customer. The key lies not in better information, but turning
information into information that cannot be ignored.

Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity

Within the Three Circles)
The Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from
deep understanding about the intersection of the following three
circles:
1. What you can be the best in the world at and, equally important, what
you cannot be the best in the world at. 2. What drives your economic
engine - a company need not be in a great industry to become a great
company. 3. What you are deeply passionate about - You can never
motivate people to feel passionate.
The Hedgehog Concept of good-to-great companies took many years to
clarify because a Hedgehog Concept is just not an event, but a process.
Build a Council
A council is a standing body that exists as a device to gain understanding
about the important issues facing the organization. They meet
periodically, as often as once a week. Management team members and
co- members of the organization are the key members of the council.
Each member listens to other’s opinions, respects each member of the
council, and possesses the ability to argue and debate in search of
understanding. Each has extensive knowledge of portions of the
organization and the group is comprised so that the individual
knowledge bases reasonably overlap, but in the whole, encompass the
entire organization and its operations. The council does not seek
consensus, knowing that consensus decisions are often at odds with
intelligent decisions. The leading executive is responsible for the final
decision.

Chapter 6: The Culture of Discipline

Rinsing your cottage cheese
Give more effort and push your self a little bit harder for a better
performance.
Everyone wants to be at the top, but some organizations lack the
discipline to find out, with egoless clarity, what they can do to be the
best or to exert all of their energies, whatever the consequences, to
shape the potentials into realities. The key to success is discipline.
‘Rinsing your cottage cheese’ comes from the example of a dieting man
who wanted every advantage he could grasp to help him achieve his
goal. So, in order to cut even more calories, he rinsed his cottage cheese.

Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators

“The good –to-great are motivated by a deep creative urge and inner
compulsion for sheer excellence for its own sake. Those who build and
perpetuate mediocrity are motivated more by fear of being left behind.”
If you ever find yourself thinking that technology alone holds the key to
success, then think of the United States-Vietnam war. The Americans
lost to the Vietnamese despite superior technology.

Chapter 8: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

The Flywheel
When pushing a massive flywheel laid horizontally on its axle, the first
pushes require the greatest exertion and effort to obtain a rotation. As
the wheel gains momentum, it requires less energy to maintain the
rotation. If the same first push energy is continually applied, however,
the wheel will go faster and faster, gaining momentum until, with the
accumulated effort of pushing consistantly in one direction, it will over
the course of time, carry its speed into a breakthough momentum. This
is how the good-to-great process of company transformation is best
described. Successful transformation comes from an overall
accumulation of consistent effort over time.
The Doom Loop
The Doom Loop occurs when a company, while in the process of gaining
momentum, is confronted with the implementation of a new direction,
usually accompanied by the appointment of a new leader, a merger, or
acquisition. The flywheel comes to a screeching, grinding halt. The
company, in changing direction, must now put the wheel back into
motion by pushing in the opposite direction. The results are
disappointing, which leads to reaction without understanding what
went wrong. This leads to more disappointing results, followed by new
fads, leaders, or events to try and save the company, which cannot
progress because the wheel, in having to constantly change direction,
can never regain its original momentum.

Chapter 9: From Good-to-Great to Built to Last

Collins states that this book is not a sequel, but a prequel to his first
book, Built to Last. The findings in Good to Great create sustainable
great results for a start-up or an established organization. The findings
in Built to Last take a company from great results to being an enduring
great company.
Good to Great answers the fundamental question that was not answered
in Built to Last - the difference between the good BHAG (big hairy
audacious goal) and a bad BHAG.
The deliverance of returns to share holders isn’t the primary reason for
existance in the enduring great companies. Rather, its profits and cash
will flow like blood and water through a healthy body which, while
essential for life, is not the point of life.
Some concepts such as Level 5 Leadership, First Who, Then What, and
the Stockdale Paradox are very much related to the other concepts
introduced in Built to Last.
If you are doing something you care deeply about and if you believe in it,
then there’s no reason why you can’t try to make it great. If you had to
ask yourself why you should make it great, then you are going in the
wrong direction. Doing something that you are impassioned about and
doing something to make make that passion great is the pathway to
greatness and satisfaction will follow - both personally and
professionally.

SUMMARY 2

LDRS 399—Internships in Leadership

Discussion Questions for Good to Great
Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great
1. What criteria did Collins use to find eleven good to great examples? What
results did they focus on? Why?
2. Was the crucial comparison question: “What did the good-to-great
companies
share in common? What was the question? Why?
Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership
3. What is a “level 5 leader?” What are the two main contradictory
characteristics
of level 5 leaders?
4. Here is a question Collins does not ask: Why do you suppose a level 5
leaders are
effective? (Hint: why do you suppose people follow and respond positively
to
them? Does this have anything to do with Lencioni’s concepts of
vulnerability
and trust?)
Chapter 3: First Who…Then What
5. Who are the right people to get on the bus?
6. What does it mean for the right people to be rigorous?
7. Are the right people motivated by high salaries? Explain.
8. How does one find out who the right people are?
9. Are layoffs more likely in good-to-great companies or mediocre
companies?
Why?
10. What does it mean to be rigorous?
Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts
11. Why is uncovering the truth important?
12. How does on create a culture where the truth is heard?
Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept
13. Summarize the essay of the hedgehog and the fox? What does this
metaphorical
story mean?
14. What are the “three circles” of the Hedgehog Concept?
15. Is the Hedgehog Concept the goal to be the best or the understanding of
what one
can be the best at? What is the difference?
16. What is your economic denominator?
17. Should you get passionate about what you do or should you do what you
are
passionate about? What is the difference?
18. What is the Council and what is the Council’s role?
Chapter 6: The Culture of Discipline
19. What is the purpose of bureaucracy? Why should bureaucracy be
avoided? How
does one avoid bureaucracy?
20. Who are the right people to get on the bus?
Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators
21. If technology is responsible for 20% of the success of a company, what is
responsible for the other 80%?
Chapter 9: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop
22. Why is it important to know that it took John Wooden 13 years of
laboring in
obscurity before he won an NCAA championship?
23. Explain the power of continuous improvement and incremental
results?
24. What behaviors lead to the “doom loop?”
Chapter 9: From Good to Great to Built to Last
25. Why is it so important to preserve a company’s core ideology?
26. What is a BHAG and how does it stimulate progress?
27. What is Collins’ reason for going for greatness? What is your reason?
What is a
servant leader’s reason from a Christian perspective?